In 2016, IEEE Spectrum spotlighted Ohio State College’s Buckeye Present group, a bunch of engineering college students who dared to check their electrical bike’s mettle in opposition to professionals within the grueling Pikes Peak Worldwide Hill Climb. The 20-kilometer “Race to the Clouds” challenged the scholars with 156 hairpin activates a trek to the 4,300-meter summit.
By 2022, solely two members of the group have been holdovers from the Pike’s Peak days. The group roster wasn’t the one change. That 12 months, the Buckeye Present group shifted its focus from conquering mountains to shattering land velocity data. In a collaboration with the group’s sponsor, Monaco-based Venturi Group, college students began constructing and testing a wholly new electrical bike, the RW-5 Voxan.
In August, the Buckeye Present group and the RW-5 Voxan, piloted by Venturi’s head of engineering, Louis-Marie Blondel, set 4 new world velocity data on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah throughout the Bonneville Bike Velocity Trials. The trials have been overseen by the Fédération Internationale de Motorcyclisme (FIM).
Rebuilding a Report-Setting Staff
David Cooke, the senior affiliate director at OSU’s Heart for Automotive Analysis, is the group’s school advisor. He says the profitable Pikes Peak group was scattered by the COVID-19 pandemic. “The timing was horrible,” he says. “The group had simply wrapped up an entire sequence of races and was simply seeking to determine what it could do subsequent. Then the pandemic hit, and the group shrank right down to nearly nothing.”
“On our final day at Bonneville, I informed the group, ‘You began a number of weeks in the past as an important scholar membership, however you’re leaving as a racing group.’” —David Cookie, OSU’s Heart for Automotive Analysis
Cooke recollects that the remnant was two college students who have been engaged on associated aspect tasks, together with an electrical filth bike. They and Laura Friedmann, graduate scholar who lately earned her grasp’s diploma in mechanical engineering, fashioned the nucleus of the revived Buckeye Present group. In simply two years, they have been in a position to recruit new group members, design and construct the RW-5 Voxan, and decide up a bunch of technical and challenge administration abilities and expertise that they’d by no means have gained contained in the classroom.
Cooke credit the short bounce-back to OSU’s wealthy institutional information. “We’ve seven of those competitors groups, with a complete of about 300 college students, that function out of our facility,” says Cooke. “All informed, we’ve been collaborating in competitions resembling Method SAE and Baja SAE for 35 years, so there’s a whole lot of institutional information there. Even when the group has youthful college students coming in, there’s at all times some senior individuals round who know tips on how to educate vital abilities resembling machining, design, and tips on how to manage themselves for fast turnarounds on the observe.”
Report-Setting Efficiency
The FIM assesses a motorbike’s velocity utilizing a straight path measuring 9 miles (14.5 kilometers) lengthy. On the 2-mile (3.2-kilometer) mark, after the bike has reached its high velocity, it breaks a laser beam that begins a timer. A second laser, both 1 mile or 1 kilometer farther on the route (relying on the actual document being tried), the bike interrupts a second laser beam that stops the timer. The remainder of the route gives room for the motive force to coast right down to a velocity at which it’s protected to use the brakes.
The FIM makes use of a median velocity throughout two runs tried inside a two-hour window in its document concerns. Buckeye Present group president Sabina Williams, a fourth-year scholar pursuing a bachelor’s diploma in mechanical engineering, says that by the point the Bike Velocity Trials started, the group was in a position to accomplish the turnaround inside one hour.
The Buckeye Present group entered the 148-kilogram RW-5 Voxan within the velocity trials’ electrical bike class for machines weighing between 100 and 150 kilograms. (There’s additionally a class for machines between 150 and 300 kg, and an “limitless” class for something past 300 kg.) Williams says the group added specifically machined metallic items to deliver the RW-5 Voxan’s weight proper as much as the 150 kg restrict. The added weight, the group figured, could be balanced out by bettering the bike’s traction on the salt flats’ slippery floor: Cooke says that the salt floor at Bonneville has about half the coefficient of friction of asphalt. “So as a substitute of driving on grippy asphalt on a wonderful Sunday,” he says, “you’re driving on a floor whose traction approximates asphalt after something from a light-weight rain to snow and ice.”
To place the Buckeye Present group’s bike in perspective, take into account the long-lasting Vespa scooter. The peppiest of these light-weight scooters put out 18 kilowatts, or simply shy of 25 horsepower, in contrast with the 130 kW (174 hp) the RW-5 Voxan’s Past AXM2 axial flux motor delivers. The electrical bike’s energy output is similar to that of Ducati’s Panigale V2, a gasoline-powered, street-legal sport bike that weighs in at 200 kg.
The Buckeye group’s profitable pairing of middleweight energy in a light-weight bundle allowed the RW-5 Voxan to set new all-time velocity data in 4 classes:
- Quickest common velocity and not using a fairing (an aerodynamic cowl designed to cut back turbulence): 271.323 km/h (168.59 mph) over one mile.
- Quickest common velocity and not using a fairing: 271.515 km/h (168.71 mph) over one kilometer.
- Quickest common velocity with a fairing: 289.74 km/h (180.035 mph) over one mile.
- Quickest common velocity with a fairing: 289.79 km/h (180.065 mph) over one kilometer.
These data are nonetheless pending validation by FIM.
New Challenges for Buckeye Present
Although there was no mountain to climb this time round, the Ohio State group nonetheless confronted challenges. Whereas prepping in Utah, Williams says that racing the bike at or close to peak energy prompted its motor to burn out. The group changed it with a spare motor they occurred to have available. After working late into the evening calibrating the brand new motor, they have been in a position to full the ultimate two of the 4 days of timed sprints, throughout which the bike was pushed to its limits. “That was a major problem I used to be proud to see the group overcome,” says Williams.
A standard theme amongst electrical bike groups there, Williams says, was battling battery temperatures. The Buckeye Present group had problem retaining its machine’s 567-volt lithium-ion battery pack cool within the warmth of the salt flats. Williams notes that one other group had issues retaining its battery heat sufficient to race within the mornings when temperatures have been low. And all the groups confronted a relentless battle to maintain the salt from corroding their bikes’ metallic elements.
The world document achievements not solely spotlight the continued success of the Buckeye Present group but additionally underscore the potential of electrical bikes to set new benchmarks in velocity and efficiency. “What we had on this group have been a whole lot of actually vivid aspiring engineers,” says Cooke. “However we didn’t have a single one that had expertise with race automobiles or on a racing group. On our final day at Bonneville, I informed the group, ‘You began a number of weeks in the past as an important scholar membership, however you’re leaving as a racing group.’” Williams says the newly minted race group now has its sights set on a brand new purpose: Eclipsing the 200 mile-per-hour (322-kilometer-per-hour) mark inside the subsequent 12 months.
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